The 17th Suspect (Women's Murder Club #17)(19)

She said, “I’m staying at the Green Street Shelter right now.”

I thanked her just as Conklin came toward us saying, “Baskin and I went through a few trash cans around the corner. We didn’t find the gun, but we’ve got this.”

He held up a man’s three-quarter-length coat, gray wool, with an intact lining.

“It’s not new, but I’d still call this a ‘nice’ coat,” said Conklin. “Knit gloves are in the pockets.”

A freaking lead. O-kay.

“If it belonged to the shooter, he just ditched it so he wouldn’t be recognized. This coat wouldn’t have been in the trash for long.”

Headlights swept the parking area. I looked up to see a van coming around the one-cruiser barricade to the crime scene at the side of the antique-mechanical-game museum.

It was CSI’s mobile forensic lab.

Thank you, God. The cavalry had arrived.





CHAPTER 26


THE CRIME SCENE investigation van was parked outside the barrier tape, which enclosed a sixty-square-foot area of asphalt, a dead woman, and a double handful of cops and vagrants.

CSIs and techs poured out of the van and began setting up lights and an evidence tent. Moments later an SUV rolled up to the outer perimeter across the parking area on the Embarcadero side and stopped.

I heard shouting and saw Casey and Baskin try to block a gray-haired man and a teenage girl who had emerged from the vehicle. But they broke past the cops and ran toward the body on the ground. And now every gory detail was illuminated by professional-grade halogen lights.

A third person got out of the SUV. I recognized her from a hundred yards, and she saw me. From her gestures and body language I gathered that Millie Cushing was telling the cops at the barrier that she knew me.

I called out, “She’s okay.”

The tape was lifted. Cushing skirted the inner perimeter, sticking close to the museum’s stucco wall, and crossed the parking area quickly. When she reached me, she said, “I phoned Laura’s husband. I had to let him know.”

The teenage girl screamed, “Oh, my Goooood, oh, my Goooood. Mommy, noooo. Get up, Mommy, get up. Oh, my God, Mommy. Pleeease.”

The shrieks and cries coming from Laura Russell’s daughter pierced the ambient sound of police radios, traffic on the Embarcadero, crowd noise coming from beyond our crime scene out on the pier.

The man I took to be the young woman’s father grabbed her into a tight hug as a CSI forced them away from the body of someone they loved.

I was shaken. What had happened here? Why was a former schoolteacher with a family living on the street? Why was she murdered? Was this killing personal or circumstantial?

Was Millie Cushing right that someone with a beef against the homeless was picking them off one by one?

My phone rang in my pocket. I looked at the screen. It was Brady.

He said, “Boxer, Sergeant Stevens and his partner, Moran, are on the way.”

“The family of the victim is here, Brady. They should be brought in for questioning.”

“Step back, Boxer. You hear me?”

I heard him. Central Homicide’s turf.

I stood with Conklin and Millie Cushing outside the tape at the boundary of the crime scene. I leaned against a patrol car and watched as the CSIs took photos of the murder victim and began to process the corrupted crime scene.

At long last an unmarked car came through the barrier at the Embarcadero end of the parking area and slowed to a stop near the CSI van. Two men in sports jackets got out.

Stevens and Moran had arrived.





CHAPTER 27


CONKLIN AND I watched Stevens and Moran, the two detectives from Central Station, approach Gene Hallows, a senior CSI on the graveyard shift.

My partner said, “Let’s give them what we’ve got.”

He held up the crime scene tape and we ducked under it, then crossed the parking area to join the cluster of CSIs and the pair of detectives. Thanks to the bug Millie Cushing had stuck in my ear and my own eyewitness account, I’d already indicted our colleagues for lateness and a lack-adaisical attitude, until proven otherwise.

I would try to be diplomatic.

I said to Stevens, “Sorry to interrupt, Sergeant. I’m Lindsay Boxer. My partner, Rich Conklin.”

Stevens said, “I recognize you, Boxer. You look like your father.”

“I guess I do.”

“I met you when you were this high. Marty used to bring you to Robbie Crusoe’s, sit you on the bar top while we watched the games outta Candlestick. You didn’t like beer.”

I smiled. “I do now.”

“Like I said, you take after your father.”

I didn’t recognize Stevens and I didn’t want to think about Marty Boxer. My father hadn’t been the worst cop in the world, but he had been a degenerate gambler and worse. He had left my mother with terminal breast cancer when I was thirteen, my sister six years younger. He didn’t reenter our lives again until I was out of college. I’d seen him a couple of times after that, and he’d been in touch with my sister; but just when I might have forgiven him for past crimes and misdemeanors, he stood me up for walking me down the aisle at my wedding.

As far as I knew, Marty Boxer was dead. At any rate, he was dead to me.

Conklin told Stevens, Moran, and Hallows, “We’ve been here for about an hour and can fill you guys in on what we found.”